On Friday, the Wales family attended the Princess of Wales’s Together at Christmas event at Westminster Abbey. This is now the fourth year of this “Christmas carol” event and this year’s was notable not for anything that happened during the show, but because Kate “planned” it and attended it. This is basically of only three annual events on her schedule which she bothers with at this point – this, Trooping the Colour and Remembrance Sunday. That’s it. Her appearance this year obviously comes after her health struggles in the past twelve months, although unnamed sources have indicated that Kate was actually having health issues long before her January “planned abdominal surgery.”

For this year’s Together at Christmas event, Kate wore a new (?) coat by Sarah Burton for McQueen. She keeps wearing Burton-for-McQueen pieces, and I keep wondering if she’s pulling out pieces from her storage, because Sarah Burton hasn’t been creative director of McQueen in over a year. Has this coat been languishing in some storage set for a few years? It’s “timeless” in the sense that it looks really dated, and that’s what Kate likes. She asks designers to make coats and dresses which look like sh-t her mother wore in the ‘80s. As you can tell, I rolled my eyes at the gigantic black chest bow. Are bows the new buttons? Oh, wait, the coat has giant buttons too. Apparently, underneath the coat, Kate wore an Emilia Wickstead skirt. We didn’t see it because Kate did not remove her coat inside the Abbey.

As for the kids… I went back and double-checked, Princess Charlotte is wearing the same burgundy coat she wore to last year’s Together at Christmas event. Did Charlotte’s clothing allowance get slashed too?? Prince William, Louis and George all wore ties in the burgundy/red range, so the family was all coordinated, although I do think Kate and Charlotte’s coats clashed with one another.

Paloma Faith (of all people) asked Kate about her health at the event, and Kate told her: “I didn’t know this year was going to be the year that I’ve just had… The unplanned, exactly. But I think lots of people this year have had such challenging times, and many who are here today.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.